[Table 44] Troubleshooting portal website

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  Search result screen

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  Main screen

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  Login screen

Inspiration

A few weeks prior, one of my friends back in Japan asked me to build a troubleshooting portal website for his workplace, as the workers there struggle daily to fix machine troubles without any references.

What it does

The website is basically a CRUD application with a Firestore database. After creating an account on the website, you can post information on a machine trouble and its troubleshooting method, and view and search for similar troubles in the past.

How we built it

I used Flask and HTML for front- and back-end. For a cloud server and a database, I hosted on GCP and Firebase, respectively. It needed to be able to be accessed from different sorts of devices like a PC or a smartphone so I decided to make a portal website instead of a mobile app. I really wanted to collaborate with other like-minded people but I decided not to, since it was a project for my friend and was needed to be built in Japanese.

Challenges we ran into

Configurations of cloud platforms and connecting them via SSH were a bit of a pain. I think I wasted a few hours on them.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I managed to finish implementing the basic functionality of the portal website by the deadline!

What we learned

I think I solidified my knowledge of cloud configuration and what each web development tool (like Docker, VM instances) does.

What's next for Troubleshooting portal

I’d like to brush up the front-end and the search function more. Since the website will be used while workers are at a construction site, posting troubleshooting information needs to be simpler and faster. Also, I’d like to implement the function of exporting the data as a csv file so that they can analyse the data later on.

Built With

• docker
• firebase
• flask
• gcp
• html
• python